Airbus and MTU Aero Engines to create a joint venture to develop a fully electric hydrogen fuel cell engine

 Air­bus and MTU Aero Engines intend to deep­en their col­lab­o­ra­tion by estab­lish­ing a joint ven­ture ded­i­cat­ed to the devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of a ful­ly elec­tric hydro­gen fuel cell engine.

This upcom­ing mile­stone fol­lows the Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MoU) signed by both com­pa­nies at the Paris Air Show in June 2025.

By estab­lish­ing a ded­i­cat­ed and high­ly agile organ­i­sa­tion­al set-up, the part­ners aim to accel­er­ate tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment, design, test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of a rev­o­lu­tion­ary propul­sion sys­tem for avi­a­tion based on a hydro­gen fuel cell. The new enti­ty will be sup­port­ed by Air­bus and MTU with all their com­pe­tences and through var­i­ous engi­neer­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing teams from both organ­i­sa­tions.

This non-bind­ing agree­ment is sub­ject to stan­dard reg­u­la­to­ry approvals and the com­ple­tion of social process­es at Euro­pean and nation­al lev­els. The new joint ven­ture is expect­ed to start oper­a­tions in 2027.

Bruno Fichefeux, Head of Future Pro­grammes at Air­bus, said: “Our planned joint ven­ture is the next log­i­cal step in our shared vision of a hydro­gen-based propul­sion con­cept for avi­a­tion. By pool­ing our respec­tive tech­nol­o­gy and exper­tise into a ded­i­cat­ed enti­ty, we are estab­lish­ing a Euro­pean pow­er­house capa­ble of trans­form­ing advanced research into indus­tri­alised, cer­ti­fi­able elec­tric propul­sion sys­tems.

“This new com­pa­ny will help secure strate­gic sov­er­eign­ty in the next gen­er­a­tion of avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies while strength­en­ing our abil­i­ty to achieve the long-term ZEROe ambi­tion.”

MTU Aero Engines has also reached some impor­tant mile­stones over the past months: the design for the company’s Fly­ing Fuel Cell has been nailed down, stack man­u­fac­tur­ing for the demon­stra­tor has start­ed, the eMoSys elec­tric motor was suc­cess­ful­ly test­ed for the first time, and the first test cell went into oper­a­tion in Munich.

Dr. Ste­fan Weber, SVP Engi­neer­ing and Tech­nol­o­gy at MTU Aero Engines, added: Our ambi­tious goal is to pave the way for a new­ly devel­oped, safe, reli­able and eco­nom­i­cal propul­sion sys­tem that will con­tribute to cli­mate-neu­tral avi­a­tion.

“This project is a cru­cial mile­stone on our path to the first hydro­gen-pow­ered engine – and this is true Euro­pean tech­nol­o­gy lead­er­ship. To that end, we want to cre­ate a com­pa­ny that cov­ers the entire life cycle of fuel cell pow­er­trains – from devel­op­ment and test­ing through cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion.”

Hydro­gen fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy gen­er­ates elec­tric­i­ty through an elec­tro­chem­i­cal reac­tion between hydro­gen and oxy­gen, pro­duc­ing only water vapour as a byprod­uct. This would elim­i­nate inflight emis­sions of car­bon diox­ide (CO₂) and nitro­gen oxides (NOx) and con­tribute to reduc­ing avi­a­tion’s cli­mate impact.

The chem­i­cal ele­ment has the poten­tial to play a cru­cial role in sub­stan­tial­ly reduc­ing the cli­mate impact of avi­a­tion in the long term and trans­form­ing air trans­port in a way com­pa­ra­ble to the impact of elec­tric vehi­cles in the auto­mo­tive sec­tor.

In March 2025, Air­bus announced that it was focus­ing efforts on a fuel cell ful­ly-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem. The results of the fuel cell pro­to­type and pow­er­train test­ing, as well as research into com­ple­men­tary tech­nol­o­gy such as cryo­gen­ics, sup­port­ed the via­bil­i­ty of this tech­nol­o­gy.

The joint ven­ture is dri­ven by the part­ners’ shared ambi­tion to cre­ate the tech­nol­o­gy leader in this field and pro­vide the first hydrogen–based fuel cell propul­sion sys­tem to a com­mer­cial air­craft.

It will com­bine Air­bus’ exten­sive com­mer­cial air­craft pro­gramme knowl­edge, sig­nif­i­cant fuel cell propul­sion and liq­uid hydro­gen exper­tise with MTU’s mul­ti-year fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment and its recog­nised engine design, inte­gra­tion, val­i­da­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion as well as main­te­nance exper­tise.

Beyond the engine tech­nolo­gies, Air­bus and MTU will con­tin­ue to fos­ter the emer­gence of a hydro­gen avi­a­tion econ­o­my and the asso­ci­at­ed reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work, which are also crit­i­cal enablers to the advent of hydro­gen-pow­ered flight at scale.